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For those for whom an event in the present can alter their enjoyment of their past, no explanation will be sufficient.

I've spent all of my adult life married to a woman who had a choice to let the death of her husband at 25 recast all of the goals they'd achieved as a young couple into dross OR celebrate the many goals they'd achieved, then go on to build new ones.

That's true mastery at life.

L5 achieved.

The same mindset is possible vis-a-vis Eve and CPP.

Except it is more like they can pay to rent motorbikes and lances, then impale you as they go past toward the same finish line.

The problem with that analogy is that there is 0 room for interference or impedance. Training isn't something that someone else can stop you from using in any way. They can rent motorcycles all they want, they're now free to do so and it doesn't bother me at all since we were all never in a race to begin with.

When I sought peak SP per hour it was for my own benefit in expanding my own skills faster that I myself would otherwise, not catching up of keeping up with others. I've had years to learn to deal with people having more SP than me while still enjoying the game, so even if the broke out F1 cars, so long as those cars can harm my bike I'm still not going to insist they can't have then to make me feel better or pretend it means I have to get an F1 car now to in order to try to be happy with the game.

Problematically to you objection, with the exception of sov changes, every single factor in that complaint is both voluntary and completely avoidable.

You want a 1x charge for you time or are concerned about $/SP the course is simple. Sub your account and train normally. Stop acting like this is somehow compulsory. Just don't use it.

The only way CCP makes more money from this is people using it, and if they're using it they must find it worthwhile. And it's their choice made under their values. I don't find it worthwhile, as you point out, so I don't use it. Simple. Still paying for 30 (or 90/180/360) days at a time and nothing more (save the occasional aur skin for personal use).

As also stated before: I gave what I believed was a good balance point on this but was overruled by CCP, now for those that participate the market consequences for the pricing, if any, will become apparent. But since the numbers don't match up to what I think is appropriate it makes it easier to just do as I'd originally planned on doing since the first thread, not using the mechanic.

The F2P model is dependent on the F, which we don't have in any true form yet (every sub is still paid even if indirectly and the means to pay it, even selling SP, doesn't fundamentally change that).

As such no, I don't see an F2P model here, but as posted in the past I do agree on the concept of double dipping, but that's an opinion on a personal level. Other have argued the current price beneficial and I'm willing to concede they may have a point given the mechanic is both new and as of yet not collapsing.

Besides, the core of all SP advancement is still training, which is sub based. If'when CCP introduces trainingless subs we'll have room to re-evaluate and discuss this further alongside the willingness to continue playing/paying. Till then I'm content with the current choice to not participate from both a fair price standpoint as well as personal preference in how I develop my characters.

Books.

Although this is obviously correct, the individual perspective is different. If I do not pay money from my wallet, it is F2P for me - if I do, it is not. I can play for free for many years with money that someone else paid in the past and that has already been spent by CCP (it might have been accrued in the balance sheet, but a good portion of the liquidity has already been used).

The major problem I see at the current stage is, that with character progression over time, more and more players do not need to pay for the game with their own wallets. This growing number of potential F2Players has to be substituted by more players who are willing to spend RL money or by players, who are willing to spend more money.

There are not so many options for CCP:

a) make it far more difficult to pay for your gametime with ISK

This implies the danger of decreasing player numbers and such be bad for marketing and option b) - and the game, but I am talking business only

b) get more new players in and keep them

This will require a bundle of measures that might include changing game mechanics to cater to a younger customer base, which might have different expectations compared to the current average customer base. If I think of my 14 year old son who tried EvE for a while - the game would have to be very different from its current stage in order for him to stay interested in. His friends did not even give it a try when he was playing and advertising it - most of them are "playing" SC on the other hand.

c) find other ways to monetize on your IP

This is what is currently enforced - now for the first time with the visible goal to support option b), I am not so sure how succesful this will be in the long run.

It will very likely be a combination of all three options and I assume that we "older" players might not like all of them as we are not the primary target group.

I dont know if you intentionally missed my point here or not, The free 2 play model offers its playerbase the opportunity to gather certain resource(s) at a set level per day allowing you access to build, create or develop, If you want to then speed it up by way of said resources, coins, materials you can by purchasing. Apart from the fact we are still paying monthly for EvE the whole game now is based around the freeplay design.

No, It's new but its always going to be charging the seller twice for the privilege of moving those skill points even more so when you take into account the diminishing returns as the player pool of skill points will only diminish leaving farming a viable restocking source. The aurum sale is only for so long then they will rise in price not lessen.

Sounds like you're taking an overly broad yet somehow amazingly narrow approach to the definition of F2P design. To draw from my limited F2P experience:

GW2 and WoT wouldn't count as F2P despite actually being free to play due to not having, so far as I remember when I played them, daily allowances of resources where you could have bought our way around limits.

Meanwhile a sub game, in this case Eve, does count as F2P due to what is in my view still a mischaracterization of an already existing condition being enabled by other mechanics prior.

We're just getting more divergent here, before we were just disagreeing on whether this made Eve F2P, now I think we've moved into disagreeing on what F2P design is.

CCP charges to move anything around, as such the expectation to do so for free would have to be made in ignorance of concepts like PLEX prices relative to a sub and character transfer fees. Further while stock will decrease to just that produced by farms demand for SP shouldn't stay constant I'd estimate. Especially with rising costs for diminishing returns as buyers build more SP.

Maybe you should be less cryptic and state what you mean. How does having friends or not having friends prevent me from purchasing, injecting, and queuing skills? Seems to be working fine either way.